Just after the last cloud of the monsoon showered its last droplet, on a moonless night when nobody was watching, God emptied a few colour-bearing clouds over the Sahyadris.
The month was September, and the spot was Kaas Plateau, 30 kilometres to the west of Satara. A spot better known as Maharashtra's very own Valley of Flowers.
It's a ritual that happens every year. The only difference this year was that the Karvi flower joined in the celebrations. So apart from the usual riot of yellow, orange, rust brown, pink and white, a rare, new colour was added from God's own infinite palette. A colour that he uses only once in 12 years: the purple hues of the Karvi.
The never-ending tablelands akin to the topography of the nearby hill-station of Mahabaleshwar then transform into colourful carpets interwoven with flora of endless varieties. Thus becoming a veritable treasure house of bio-diversity, and a botanist's paradise. And of course, a butterfly's delight, and a photographer's dream.
The lighting was just perfect when we reached at 9 in the morning: the sun was playing hide and seek behind the monsoon clouds that were refusing to go back to the land of their birth.
When the reluctant clouds slowly started moving, the peeping sun lit up the sweeping panorama in small patches, creating moving images on a static landscape.
As we walked to the edge of the tableland that overlooked Kaas Lake, we had to trample on innocent carpets of flowers. To lessen the guilt, we tread as gingerly as we could, without hurting the gentle flowers. And as my 12-year-old teacher Parju Pir says, 'After taking the permission of the flowers.'
Right through the journey across the plateau, we stopped at exactly the right spots without anyone guiding us. Probably in this plateau, for some fleeting moments, you acquire the instincts of a butterfly that senses the exact locations of the flowerscapes.
Then we witnessed two instances of Nature gone totally wild.
One was a humble grass pretending to be a flowering plant. As if to compete with the plethora of flowers all around, an entire landscape was covered with tiny grass-flowers of a dust brown hue. And the other was the curious case of a plant, which in total contrast, had sprouted a bunch of green flowers!
At the lake, we found the tell-tale signs of a dam ahead. A clump of trees submerged up to the trunks in water, gasping for breath.
On our way back, an eternal truth dawned on me. The pristine beauty of Nature is better preserved when it's difficult to be accessed by man. The Valley of Flowers in the Himalayas has remained fairly untouched because it's at 14,000 feet above sea level. And the climb from Joshimath to Gangriya is enough to take your last breath away! The flamingos in Kachchh too have survived because it takes a back-breaking camel ride of half a day to reach their far-flung breeding grounds in the Flamingo City.
But this amazing Valley of Flowers unfortunately is in our own backyard. Just 30 kilometres from the bustling town of Satara. And easily accessible to multitudes of mindless picnickers. Plastic pouches of their obese appetite were littered across the length and breadth of this paradise. So much so that I had to clear the trash that appeared in my frame, frame after frame. Just to retain the pristine quality of the picture postcard.
Only restricted access, with a stringent set of environmental regulations, should be allowed. Or better still, declaration of this rich biosphere as a Botanical Sanctuary (if ever there was one!) might help in preserving it for posterity.
Be that as it may, as we reached the last leg of our memorable journey, we were to witness the silent fury of Mother Nature.
There were entire stretches of land that were first deforested by man and later afforested as a benevolent gesture towards Nature, albeit with 'commercially viable' teak plantations.
Mother Nature, unable to bear these human atrocities, despatched a pest that devoured the life-giving chlorophyll of these teak leaves and reduced them to a mere web of brown veins that cannot sustain life. And the trees then suffered certain death. Thus altering a lush green landscape to a wasteland of vengeful brown.
The most amazing thing is, this pest leaves every other endemic tree of the forest untouched, and wreaks havoc only on the 'afforested' trees!
Yes, when you interfere with Nature, at one point she gets back at you, with a fury that's unmatched in scale and impact.
Just as we approached the town of Satara, I became conscious of the transient nature of Nature. This efflorescence of colours, this wild and exuberant celebration of Nature that I witnessed in Kaas, will be over in another week's time. And life will go on – colourless and odourless – till the end of the next monsoon.
And then once again the whole landscape of Kaas will wake up one fine morning dressed in God's own clothes, dyed in God's own colours.
